Barth on Domesticating The Wild Word (Willimon)

Building on a few earlier posts from this book (William Willimon, Conversations with Barth on Preaching [Nashville: Abingdon, 2006]), here is another Barthian theme that throws the furniture around. "The domesticating of revelation... [is] the process of making the gospel respectable.  When the gospel is offered to man and he stretches out his hand to …

Willimon on Barth II

This should be in the library of everyone interested in homiletics, Willimon, or Barth: William Willimon, Conversations with Barth on Preaching (Nashville: Abingdon Press, 2006).  Even if you're not a Barthian, this book will "get" you; I'm not, and it did.  Or, as Flannery O' Conner put it, "I like old Barth: he throws the …

Christ – My Life Coach Helping Me Overcome My Bad Habits?

Here's what Willimon says about Horton's new book which diagnoses the Amerincan church, Christless Christianity: The Alternative Gospel of the American Church (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2008): "Here the roots of our current theological malaise are exposed and we see the wrong turns we took when we began taking ourselves more seriously than God.  Michael Horton …

Willimon On Barth

Here's a unique and wonderfully interesting mix: Willimon writing a homiletics book with a purposeful Barthian bent.  If you're a preacher, you'll love this book but also probably hate it.  One page you'll be underlining or highlighting whole paragraphs, the next you'll probably write question marks beside every line. Let me just throw out a …

Our Father

"Some people are offended that we are taught to address God as Father. The greater offense may be the little word Our. In this prayer we are taught to pray, not as individuals, but as the church. When we say ‘Our,’ we are not being possessive. Many a person has come to grief attempting to …